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The Supreme Court recently examined the use of recordings of employer-employee discussions as evidence in a lawsuit and provided a number of useful principles in this regard. For example, this type of recording can be used as evidence if at least one of the individuals involved in the recorded discussion is a party to the lawsuit and the party against whom the recording has been filed as evidence has not duly contested its actuality or content.

The Constitutional Court has deemed unlawful the provision of the Jobs Act concerning indemnity in the case of the unlawful dismissal of employees hired after March 2015. According to the court's first press release, the sole criterion of an employee's seniority provided by the act for the calculation of the indemnity is contrary to the principles of reasonableness and equality, as well as the employment rights and protection provided by Articles 4 and 35 of the Constitutional Chart.

The Supreme Court recently found that a dismissal for just cause is unlawful if the employer uses an investigator to monitor an employee's job performance. The ban on the use of investigative agencies also applies to activities carried out by employees off their employer's premises and renders investigative reports unusable unless they concern behaviour that suggests criminal activity.

The Supreme Court recently found that in the case of a dismissal of an executive due to cost reductions, the main requirement is that the company's reorganisation process must be genuine. Employers are not required to prove that they are in economic difficulty. Rather, it is enough for them to demonstrate that the employee's job will no longer exist due to organisational changes.

The Supreme Court recently stated that an employer that installs a camera in its workplace to monitor an employee's activity can be found guilty of a crime under Decree-Law 196/03, even if the camera was installed to protect goods and property. The court found that the dignity and privacy of the employee in question were more worthy of protection than the economic value of corporate goods and property and that reforms in this regard introduced by the Jobs Act were inapplicable.

The Supreme Court recently found that an employee who notifies the judicial authorities of facts relating to his or her employer which constitute evidence of criminal activity cannot be dismissed for just cause. As regards the disciplinary liability of whistleblowing employees, it is insufficient for a complaint to be unfounded, as this does not prove that the complaint was slanderous.

An employee recently challenged her dismissal, claiming that she had been employed by a cooperative as a cleaner in a healthcare structure under a contract between the two parties. The healthcare structure was subsequently incorporated into another company, which decided to internalise the services performed by the cooperative and terminate the contract between the two parties. The Court of Milan declared the dismissal to be unlawful on the grounds that a transfer of undertaking had occurred.

The Supreme Court recently issued a decision concerning an employee's dismissal for just cause on the grounds of leaving the workplace without authorisation and conducting his work in a different location. The Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed that the existence of a just cause for dismissal must be established in relation to the seriousness of the employee's conduct and the proportionality between that conduct and any resulting penalties.

A recent Supreme Court decision found that if an employee breaches internal policies regulating access to and use of a company's IT systems, he or she can be prosecuted for illegal access to an IT system under Article 615ter of the Criminal Code. The case concerned an employee who sent three emails to which he had attached a database regarding company know-how and files containing data on the company's revenue.

In a recent decision, the Supreme Court stated that in the case of a change of contractor, employees of the previous contractor are not automatically granted the right to continue their employment relationship with the new contractor, as provided for by Article 2112 of the Civil Code, which relates to the transfer of an undertaking. The case concerned the termination of a parking service contract by an Italian municipality, which had agreed a new contract with an in-house company.

A recent Supreme Court decision found that an employer can dismiss an employee for economic reasons only if he or she cannot be assigned to a different role in the company. In particular, the court affirmed that a role offered as an alternative to dismissal can require an employee to perform lower-grade tasks than previously. Therefore, the previous ban on agreements concerning the assignment of employees to lower-level roles has been relaxed.

In a recent trial court case, an employee applied for reinstatement by a new contractor – which had taken over the loading and unloading contract at an incinerator – under the rules concerning the transfer of an undertaking. The court confirmed that an employee has the right to continue an employment relationship with a new contractor under the same conditions acquired under the previous employer.

The Court of Rome recently ruled that the transfer of an undertaking is not a ground for dismissal for economic reasons when an employment relationship continues with another employer. The decision concerned a dismissal at the end of a collective dismissal procedure by Alitalia to identify redundancies in the context of the company's sale to a new company and an international partnership with Etihad Airways.

The Supreme Court recently issued three decisions regarding the validity of dismissals following disciplinary procedures and the evaluation of proportionality between the alleged conduct of employees and the decision to dismiss them. The judgments confirm that when determining the validity of dismissals there must be consistency between the employee's alleged conduct, the acts committed and the assessment of their gravity.

The Supreme Court recently issued a decision regarding Section 4 of the Workers' Statute, concerning the remote monitoring of employees through an access badge verification system. The court ruled that an unauthorised access badge radio-frequency identification system was illegal and that the access badge system in question facilitated the global monitoring of employees.

The courts recently issued two decisions regarding privacy and access to company email accounts. The first established that an employee can access employee assessments to verify whether they have been conducted according to good-faith standards. The second confirmed that access to a corporate email account need not be provided to an employee seeking reinstatement, as such an account can be used only during a working relationship.

The Supreme Court recently issued a decision in a case regarding an employee's violation of the Penal Code after he had resigned. Article 615ter of the code punishes anyone who gains unauthorised access to computer or telecommunications systems protected by security measures or who maintains access against the express or implied permission of the party that has the right to block access to it.

An employee recently appealed to the Data Protection Authority against his employer processing personal data stored on his work computer. The computer had been seized when the employee was suspended due to alleged unauthorised access to confidential information. The authority found that the suspension was a legitimate defence against the employee's breach of the Privacy Code and the Civil Code.

The Supreme Court has issued a decision concerning workplace harassment – so-called 'mobbing' – with specific attention to the intentionality of the persecutory conduct. The case involved an employee who claimed against his employer for an injury allegedly derived from the employer having placed the employee on unemployment insurance and forcing him to take a short vacation.

The Supreme Court recently issued a decision regarding disciplinary proceedings during which the employer did not make the documents that informed the letter of reprimand available to the employee under review. The court found that the dismissal was illegitimate, as an employer must allow an employee subject to disciplinary review to examine the documents that informed the letter of reprimand if it is deemed fundamental for his or her defence.

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The International Law Office (ILO) is a series of legal newsletters which provide expert legal commentary in the form of concise, regular news updates. ILO is written in collaboration with over 500 of the world's leading experts and covers more than 100 jurisdictions.